The Dead City

Part 6: BURNING

“Well?”

We are in the stairwell, sweat dripping down our brows as we observe the unicorn in front of us, tied up with a strip of Rocky’s pants. The sights of Lakota’s crossbow never waver from the unicorn’s forehead.

I sigh. “She’ll talk. But you will tell me what happened to Fluttershy and Derpy.”

“I told you already, they fell when the façade collapsed!”

“They’re pegasi! They could have flown!”

“I didn’t see them, okay! I didn’t see them fly! I just saw them fall, and then everything went dark! I don’t know how long it’s even been! Get off my damn back!”

"Don't talk to me like that!"

“News flash, Your Highness, you’re not the boss of me! You may have been a prince back when everything was fine and dandy, but now you’re nothing but a…”

“I’m a what?! I’M A WHAT?! SAY IT, YOU PIECE OF…”

“SHUT UP!”

It is the unicorn that shouts, and her voice is so loud, so scratchy that my ears almost bleed. She breathes, and Lakota calms, if just a little bit. She has a look on her face like she can’t decide whether to point the crossbow at the unicorn…

Or at me.

I know, at that moment, that something is going to happen. Call it intuition. Call it anything. But I know.

I know two things.

Lakota is planning something.

And Derpy and Fluttershy are not dead.

“So you do talk, huh? Well, mind explaining why you hurt my friend?!”

“I’m sorry,” the unicorn weeps softly. “It’s just…after what happened to my friend, I…then the building collapsed, and I…”

“Spit it out!”

“Oh, shut up!” I yell. I don’t care about being polite anymore. Lakota is becoming more irritable by the second. I turn my attention to the unicorn.

“What’s your name?”

“Heartstrings. Lyra Heartstrings.”

“Lyra? Oh, my gosh…you’re Derpy’s friend!”

“Derpy? You’ve seen Derpy?!” she gasps, her eyes lighting up and twinkling. My own eyes cloud over, and Lakota steps in.

“Derpy’s dead,” she quips, I notice, without a hint of sadness.

“Oh…she was nice, if a bit clumsy…”

“So why’d you attack Rocky?”

“It was an accident!” Lyra cries. “I mean…I heard voices on the other side of the door, and I didn’t realize…I’ve only seen a minotaur once in my life, so I didn’t…I didn’t…”

“Good grief!” Lakota screeches. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you string two words together?!”

“Shut up, Lakota!”

“Make me, Your Highness! In case you haven’t noticed, I’m the one with the crossbow!”

“Cody…”

“Shut up, Rock!” she screams, her eyes filled with hate. “I…I…”

She is suddenly confused, as though she can’t decide whether she hates me or not. I conclude that my relationship with Lakota is over, so I take Lyra by the hoof and begin to carry her.

“Let’s get to the roof.”

“What? You’re gonna leave us?!”

“You won’t tell me what happened to Fluttershy and Derpy.”

“That’s why you’re leaving us?!”

“Cody…”

“ROCK, I SAID SHUT UP!!”

“Let’s get out of here,” I growl, beginning to climb the steps. As I draw away from them, I hear their arguing, their heated words.

I don’t know what went wrong. One minute we were surviving together. The next…

It hits me. I’ve seen it before. Why didn’t I realize it sooner?!

“Mister Armor, what’s wrong?”

I gasp for air, struck with fear.

I know what happened to Fluttershy and Derpy. The argument…the crossbow…

I don’t know how I know. I just know.

“Hang on, Lyra!” I yell as I begin to gallop up the steps, which is no easy task. Fire and blood is common here, and at around the tenth floor I slip on a massive pile of blood and gore and collapse onto Lyra, crashing into the wall.

I hear their footsteps. Lakota’s trimmed hooves on concrete. Rocky, his hooves heavier but imbalanced by the limp from Lyra’s ax.

An eyeball floats past me in the blood pool, malignant and rotten. Lyra begins to cry. I see the eyeball’s inception and nearly choke. A body lies mangled just inside the doorway to the tenth floor, behind which everlasting flame burned. The body barely resembles a pony, festering in a combination of blood, gore, and rot. I can just make out a mane of blue and pink through the blood.

“Oh, Bonbon…why? I had to…I just had to…”

The chop marks on the corpse’s head are all the explanation I need. I pick myself up, straddling Lyra, both of us bathed in blood, and we carry on.

Light. Again. But smoke-laced, hazy.

The roof is hot beneath our hooves. The fire will soon consume the entire building, and more than the façade will collapse.

I realize then how stupid my plan is. There is no way off the roof except to jump. Hitting land meant death. Hitting the water meant death or worse. I couldn’t go back.

Not when…

“Turn around, you stiff-backed dungheap.”

Lakota. I slowly turn around with Lyra still on my back.

She stands there, her crossbow pointed at me, the bolt in line with my heart. Rocky is huffing. The wound on his haunch looks bad. Both of them have mixed looks of satisfaction and confusion.

There we stand, atop the roof of fire. She is going to kill me.

“Why, Lakota?”

“I’d thought you’d figure that out by now,” she sneers. “There are no friends in this world anymore, Your Highness. You can’t trust anypony. That’s why I trusted a minotaur. We found that instead of killing each other, we could kill even more…together.”

“What? Why would you do that?”

“Survival of the fittest, Shining,” Rocky says, his tone less malicious than Lakota’s but no less evil. “Things have changed.”

“You’re murderers. You murdered Fluttershy and Derpy.”

“Yep,” Lakota laughs. “Those feathered twerps had it coming. You should have seen how much that Fluttershy cried when we kicked her off the façade. And that Derpy…she was oblivious the whole time. Kept going on about mail.”

“You killed her?!” Lyra screams.

“Yep, just like I’m gonna kill you now.”

“Lakota, you have to realize. There’s no point in killing us! We’ve got nothing valuable! We’re not worth a bolt!”

“No, you’re not. You’re worth two bolts. Each. One to the heart and one to the head. That oughta teach you.”

“TEACH US WHAT?!”

“To never trust anypony,” Rocky laughs, steam bellowing from his nostrils. “Personally, I’d have let you go. But we can’t let anypony know about what we’ve done.”

“What you’ve…” A dark, horrifying though surfaces in my mind. “Wait…you two didn’t have anything to do with this whole thing, did you?”

Lakota’s eye twitches. Rocky looks uncomfortable, and he falters on his bad leg.

“DID YOU?!”

“Oh, shut up!” she screams, preparing the crossbow. “I’ll see you in the afterland, my Prince. Oh, and by the way, I never liked you. Ever since you married Mi Amore Cadenza. She was my mare, you filth. MY MARE!”

“Huh?!”

I am so confused. What is she talking about? Even Rocky looks bewildered.

And that is my last thought.

Lakota tenses her grip on the crossbow.

Thwup.

Thunk.

“GAH!”

I do not cry. Lyra does not cry. We aren’t hit.

Lakota is looking down at her chest, where a spear has punctured through.

Thunk. Another. Thunk. Another. She is screaming in pain now, and Rocky looks for the source of the spears.

Out of nowhere, a yellow and pink mass slams into the minotaur, knocking him off his hooves—and off the building. The mass tumbles across the roof, but Rocky continues to fall and roar until he meets the ground with a sickly thud.

Lakota is holding herself. There is so much blood. But the spears just keep coming.

Thunk. In her breast.

Thunk. In her flank.

Thunk. In her open mouth, sticking out like a hook on a fish would. She is now covered in blood, and her attacker settles onto the roof on two hooves, an incredible look of fury on her face.

Derpy.

I have no words. Fluttershy, the mass that killed Rocky, is unconscious. Lyra is not looking.

But I see everything.

I see Derpy approach Lakota. I see her forcibly remove the spear that had pierced the back of the unicorn’s throat. I see her flip it around in her tongue, bring it into an arcing motion, and rest it on the inside corner of Lakota’s mouth.

Derpy snaps her head to the right, and there is a slew of blood. Lakota gurgles, then collapses, turning the hot stone red. Derpy spits out the spear and stares at the body of the unicorn, which now resembles a bloody pincushion.

“You promised me a mountain of muffins, bitch.”

The fire is burning, and we are trapped. And I don’t know how to feel.